Imagine that you are interested in purchasing a new car, how would you go about doing it? Majority of people would probably ask their relatives and friends for advice on certain car brands, try to find more information from car journals or websites, make a trip down to the car dealerships and ask questions. After all, a car is a rather high investment, and doing such research beforehand is but a routine to safeguard our interests.

Now let us take a look from the business standpoint, whether a business is launching a new product range, implementing a new marketing plan or any form of business expansion. You need information in order to introduce products and services that create value in the mind of the consumer. However the perception of value is subjective, and what customers value this year may be quite different from what they value next year. As such the attributes that create value cannot be simply deduced from common knowledge. Rather, data must be collected and analyzed. The goal of marketing research is to provide the facts and direction that business owners need to make their marketing decisions.

With that in mind, how is it so that so many businesses neglect and ignore performing marketing research before going ahead with their plans? Would you not agree that you would want to understand your consumer buying behaviors, increase your probability of success and profits whenever you make any business expansion?

Studying marketing research can be a whole degree on its own. But we will be slicing and dicing the main components here for your benefit so that you can undertake it on your own if you so choose.

For the 1st step in marketing research, you must define the objective that you wish to achieve. And this can differ greatly based on the business that you are in. Here are some examples:

- Coming up with a new brand/product name

- Understanding consumer buying behavior to position your products/services differently

- Differentiating your business from your competitors yet being relevant to your customers

- What type of membership program to roll out

- And much more…

Secondly, you must decide on your marketing research design. This comes in 2 forms, qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative methods are mainly exploratory in nature, meaning that you conduct focus groups or in-depth interviews with your target group to understand them better. The questions you would ask are usually more open ended as you do not want to restrict the flow of thoughts of the people you are asking the questions. You will be surprised with the information that you can gather from them, issues or problems that you might not have considered would usually be revealed in these sessions. However you must take note that due to the small sample size of these methods, their conclusions are not statistically sound and you cannot depend on them to make decisions.

More importantly, with the findings from qualitative research methods, you can then go on to formulate quantitative research in the form of surveys or observational studies. Using a decent sample size would then be able to assist you in drawing out the conclusions that you have defined earlier. And of course with proper analysis, you will then be better equipped to make the business decisions that you need.

Do take note that this is but merely a brief touch on marketing research methodology and we would advise that you read up more on it or approach a professional for advice before embarking on your own.

Competition in the business environment is tough and achieving a unique position and competitive advantage for your company is becoming more difficult and expensive. So how does one establish greater market share and achieve higher sales figures? One key area would be to create or strengthen your brand so as to leave a lasting impression on your clients.

In the recent years, Branding has been a hot topic, but frequently wildly misunderstood. To make things even more confusing, branding is often tossed in the same basket as marketing and design, which makes its application even more unclear to companies. An interesting façade is developing with more and more design companies touting their services as brand building. But we clearly know that creative design is but merely 1 component of building a brand.

At a recent networking sessions, I was seated next to an insurance agency manager whose sole practice was to train agents under his fold. He asked me in rapid succession (that showed me he’d be great at asking questions) the following:

“Isn’t branding for businesses that make a lot of stuff?”

“Doesn’t branding apply only if you want to sell a lot of stuff?”

“Isn’t branding pointless for my kind of business?”

Smiling, I fired back, “Yes, yes and… no.”

So what is a brand exactly all about then? Our definition of a brand is:

“ a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer and all other stakeholders. If properly managed these perceptions secure long-term revenue for the business and create lasting value”.

A brand that creates value for the business is not a logo or an advertising campaign. It is not a product, service, website or even a retail outlet. A brand is “the collective perceptions” that all these interactions create in the mind of the consumer.

Then next question that would probably pop to your mind would be then.

“But I have so many other areas to improve on in my business, why should I invest in branding?”

In most markets these days, there’s relatively little to choose between products and services in purely functional terms. So a strong brand – i.e. what a product or service stands for – is of real value in providing differentiation. More specifically, it can:

• Justify a price premium – people will pay more for a name they trust
• Maintain loyal customers – people who trust a brand tend to stick to the same brand (And we all know how much more expensive it is to attract a new client than to keep one.)
• Attract talent – who would you rather work for, Hyundai or BMW?
• Gain customer mindshare – people are very busy nowadays and they usually have no time to make comparisons between brands. Yours might be the better product or service, but they usually go along purchasing whichever they can remember of the top of your head.
• Win new business – or help you extend into new areas of business
• And much much more…

In our next issue, we will be covering more on the vital component of market research and how it is essential in helping you create your brand identity.